Inspired by stunning true accounts, The Ways We Hide is a gripping story of love and loss, the wars we fight—on the battlefields and within ourselves—and the courage found in unexpected places.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and first chapter from The Ways We Hide by Kristina McMorris, which releases on September 6th 2022.
As a little girl raised amid the hardships of Michigan’s Copper Country, Fenna Vos learned to focus on her own survival. That ability sustains her even now as the Second World War rages in faraway countries. Though she performs onstage as the assistant to an unruly escape artist, behind the curtain she’s the mastermind of their act. Ultimately, controlling her surroundings and eluding traps of every kind helps her keep a lingering trauma at bay.
Yet for all her planning, Fenna doesn’t foresee being called upon by British military intelligence. Tasked with designing escape aids to thwart the Germans, MI9 seeks those with specialized skills for a war nearing its breaking point. Fenna reluctantly joins the unconventional team as an inventor. But when a test of her loyalty draws her deep into the fray, she discovers no mission is more treacherous than escaping one’s past.
CHAPTER 1
September 1942
Brooklyn, New York
Deep within me, a sense of dread buzzes and crackles, an electrical wire threatening to short. I’m trapped by the stage lights, the performance well in motion. I assure myself that Charles’s behavior, subtle oddities throughout tonight’s tricks, falls within reason. It was at his prodding, after all, that a top New York critic agreed to attend. As a faceless judge in the shadows, the lone man can render a verdict that could pack future shows—or trigger a decline.
Even so, what I detect from Charles differs from nerves.
Only with disciplined effort do I resist rushing through the grand finale. I distribute a padlock to each of the volunteers: two airmen, a banker type, and a trio of sprightly ladies. With all the poise and undulating cadence of a showman’s assistant, I encourage their inspection. My narration flows out, as programmed as a song on a player piano. On this stage alone, it’s my fourth performance in two days.
Stewing in a haze of cigarette smoke, aftershave, and floral perfume, the medium-sized theater could be any one of a hundred. The attendance is respectable at two-thirds full. Largely from the “cheap seats” of the balcony, periodic catcalls remain standard fare, with no help from my galling if customary outfit. Astoundingly, the sequined halter and midthigh skirt are rather modest for my role.
Displayed on the prop table are two pairs of handcuffs and a set of minuscule keys. I’m retrieving them all when Charles reappears in the right wing of the stage to await my cue. He’s traded his top hat and tails for a black bathing costume that hugs his lean build from shoulders to thighs. All in line with our usual act, save for the object in his grip.
An ax.
I bristle, less from startle than confusion. A stagehand was supposed to brandish the tool, not Charles. And certainly not yet.
For a show that blends illusion and danger—from the magical mending and vanishing of items to mind reading and death-defying feats—there’s purpose to every step, glance, and gesture. To timing above all. At the climax of the act, as fears arise over the escape artist’s ability to elude his bonds, a harried display of the ax implies need for its imminent use, amplifying suspense.
It’s hardly to be used as—what? A parading of bravado?
Still, we’ve performed together with such frequency over three years of touring that my speech hitches only slightly. “Now…that our ‘committee’ of volunteers from the audience has keenly inspected the padlocks for authenticity”—I pause, prompting nods from the lock- bearing group—“death-defying escapologist Charles Bouchard shall be sealed into the galvanized-iron milk can, airtight and filled with water to its very brim.” Grandly I gesture toward the barrel-size container, just as Charles interjects.
“Een fact!” He reemerges prematurely with his faux French accent, turning the sea of heads. “So superior are my abilities to those of Harry Houdini himself, I balk at even zee most basic safeguards.”
The affront to my late idol, a legend for this very trick, irks me but briefly. More pressingly, I struggle to decipher Charles’s intentions as he strides past the volunteers to reach center stage, his slicked ebony hair tousled from his costume change. “Observe, for instance, zis emergency tool, which I have primed with a hacksaw. For what, you ask? Why, to do…zis.” Against an edge of the milk can, he slams the ax handle—once, twice—and breaks the handle in two.
My chest tightens, despite murmurs of surprise and delight. Charles slings the pieces aside with a hearty “voilà,” barely missing my T-strap heels. Even the four-piece band, routinely dispassionate in the pit, gawks with interest.
“What is more,” he proclaims, swooping toward me barefoot, “one with supernatural gifts has no need for caution. Is it not so, Mademoiselle Vos?” I’m still eyeing the can—finding no damage, gratefully—when he snatches from me the tiny ring of keys. He jangles them high, pinkie in the air, as if ringing a bell for tea service, before tossing them into his mouth and swallowing them whole.
A ripple of gasps. A mix of groans. Another maddening, bewildering detour.
Unless vitally called for, never stray from the act. Of the many rules I’ve taught him, this was the first. The most crucial.
I dredge up a smile nonetheless, bright with Victory Red lips, ever accustomed to wearing a mask as much onstage as off. And besides, I’m well aware the keys are unnecessary, the padlocks a ruse. The neck of the can is, after all, rigged with an outer and inner wall. Telescoped upward, the lid detaches with secured locks intact. It’s a deceit based on presumption, a twist on a story viewers convince themselves to be true. Just as experience tells them a book holds full-sheeted pages and a shoe heel is built solidly through, to their minds, a milk can opens only one way.
Mind you, Charles’s ingesting of the keys is real. For escapologists, a trained resistance to gagging is required to handily swallow an item, then reproduce it on cue. Compliments of a sword swallower, I learned the rather unsavory skill while on breaks from my old sleight-of-hand acts. It was at the very dime museum where I first met Charles, back when his unruly black hair wasn’t yet slicked with tonic, his average if pleasing face still free of smugness; when labeled a “curiosity,” he drew the upper crust of society to point and cringe.
Who could have guessed he’d become my greatest illusion?
“Alors, zee final touches!” Charles holds out his wrists and regards me with a jerk of his chin, a sign to administer the handcuffs and resume my patter. His granting of permission.
Annoyance curls my fingers, interrupted by a heckling sailor. “Hey, honey, I could think of some better ways to use those handcuffs!”
“Yeah, Kazlowski, like to lock up your ugly ass,” calls another. “Pipe down, all you! We got ladies here!”
The exchange is typical nowadays, with an abundance of enlisted boys high on hormones and sips from their flasks, antsy for glory half a world away. For people like me, the war could as easily be set in another universe.
Ordinarily I’d toss out a clever comeback, but distracted, I simply reassume control with a clearing of my throat. Somewhere in the room, a critic looks on.
“As you will see,” I declare in a voice that, based on a rare press mention, outsizes my graceful ladylike frame, “both pairs of handcuffs, also diligently inspected by our committee, will be fastened to Monsieur Bouchard’s wrists.”
More nods from the group. Back on script.
I apply the cuffs, tempted to attach them overly tight. Evading my glare, Charles makes a display of being firmly bound. After I remove the milk-can lid, he wriggles into the container with more sloshing than usual. The theater’s stagehands—one burly, one bearded—join us with prefilled buckets and quickly remedy the water displacement.
I discovered long ago, for help with shows and rehearsals in any theater, advance gratuity ensures a job done right. Or done at all.
“Once sealed,” I continue, “the milk can will be enclosed by a three-walled cabinet. Its triangular shape allows no room for trickery and, most notably, can be unlatched only from the inside.” The stagehands are now fetching the roofless structure from just offstage. “Upon a countdown of five, I challenge each of you fine ladies and gentlemen to hold your breath along with Monsieur Bouchard, who shall be submerged in five…four…”
The audience joins in. Charles inhales and exhales in exaggerated preparation. On the collective utterance of “one,” he plunges below the surface. My internal timer begins as I affix the cover, catching a whiff of his breath. Under the faint sweetness from his usual cherry Luden’s drops comes a citric-juniper scent, one I know well from my past.
Gin.
God in heaven…
The root of his behavior is finally clear.
But the volunteers have descended on the can. They’re securing padlocks to the latches as I’ve instructed. The band launches into a peppy tune—“Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”—as the stagehands heft the wooden cabinet into place. Swiftly assembled, the tall but sturdy barrier obscures Charles from everyone’s view.
Including mine.
A surge of fear shoots through my veins. I manage to point the volunteers back to their seats, where the audience has gone silent, breaths held. In the front row, a pigtailed girl puffs her cheeks with all the verve of Dizzy Gillespie.
Thirty seconds.
Beside the cabinet, I wait on my mark, hand on hip. Calm and confident. Already Charles should be free of his cuffs. They’re merely trick pairs, the norm for underwater acts. I deftly swapped out the real ones after the volunteers examined them. Though certain of this, I furtively confirm their distinctive weighted feel in the lower pockets of my skirt, among the many hidden compartments I’ve designed for our acts.
Forty-five seconds.
A good portion of the crowd yields to their lungs. A smattering of ladies giggle at their own folly. Fellows tend to hold out longer, surely sneaking air through their noses while attempting to impress their dates or protect their pride, likely both.
All the while, through the strategically blaring music I listen for hints of the outer neck sliding from the can. That simple step is all the escape requires. A person could finagle it deaf or blind. Drunk, even—not that Charles is. Yes, he’s become one to indulge, at times heavily these days, but after the show, never before.
Until now.
One minute.
Heat pours from the stage lights in compounding waves. Sweat prickles my scalp, my updo tightening against its pins. The last few holdouts in the auditorium are gasping for air. At any moment, a stagehand should emerge with an ax to boost anticipation, as if ready to bust through the cabinet and break off the padlocks. But that ax now lies in pieces.
At least destroying the handle didn’t damage the can, so far as I could tell.
Oh, why didn’t I stall for a closer look?
One minute thirty.
Thoughts of another escape artist barge into my mind: Genesta. His is a cautionary tale to promote double- and triple-checking. The famed performer failed to notice a critical dent in his milk can from being dropped during setup, preventing the lid’s upward slide. His fatal, final act.
It’s for this reason I demanded Charles practice for months, stretching his lungs in baths—up to three minutes, three seconds by my pocket watch—and why we use only a lid that reserves air at the very top.
Granted tonight his compromised state could make all those precautions worthless.
Two minutes.
“Hey, toots!” The same heckling sailor. “So much for your pal’s superpowers, huh?”
His jeering this time is largely lost to others’ worries, evident in faces and fidgets and murmurs. The reactions, which I normally relish, feel like viruses invading the room.
I train my gaze on the cabinet hinges. Only recently did I agree to remove the outer latch—Charles’s idea, for heightened drama—but with one provision: an inch-wide gap at the corner would allow me a peek if needed.
My yearning to do so swells, bridled by his own stipulation: even if concerned, I wasn’t to look until the three-minute mark. We’re not there yet, I know this, with every second an impossibly slow tick. Charles’s reasoning is technically sound; he’s never once faltered escaping the can, and an overt gauging of progress would dilute the act. Particularly in the mind of a critic.
But then, so would a drowning.
The decision is my call, and I’m making it.
I move with a purposeful stride to the far corner of the cabinet, as if following a choreographed routine. With a few sharp tugs, I form a narrow opening and glimpse inside. The lid appears in place, same for the padlocks, a sign of all going right. Or horrendously wrong.
My eyes strain for a fuller view, for any sight of Charles. But there’s nothing…
Scenarios skitter through my head, of his fainting underwater—as even Houdini’s skillful brother once did—or passing out from the booze, or having the keys lodged in his throat. Whichever the case, the trick is over.
“Charles! Can you hear me?” The musicians trample my voice, their notes like bootheels squashing each syllable. I snap toward the pit. “Stop!”
The song ends raggedly, giving way to dull thunks. Not from the musicians but from Charles. Muffled by water, handcuffs are striking the can. The lid must be stuck!
Suddenly there’s quiet, an audible ceasing of metal against metal. The absence of sound is smothering. I stave off panic, remembering the ax—what’s left of it.
“Hold on, I’m coming!” Heart hammering my ribs, I scramble to retrieve the head of the ax from the stage floor. I clutch its handle, a jagged stump, and thrust the blade through the cabinet gap, trying, trying to break the latch. Failing. Pain shoots through my palm. Splintered wood tears at my skin.
At the vision of him inside, trapped in darkness and starved for air, ancient memories creep from the caverns of my mind, of tangled limbs and muffled cries, an endless procession of caskets in the snow.
I block them out, seeking a solution.
Whatever am I doing? The cabinet can be toppled. This is the means of backup that Charles claimed would never be required. Like the ax he destroyed, the keys he swallowed.
I drop the blade and start shoving the cabinet with both hands. The triangular structure slides and clunks against the can, refusing to tip. I scan the wings for the stagehands. Why aren’t they there? Where did they go?
I’ve forgotten the crowd. Patrons stare with hands over mouths, perplexed, questioning. Many are half-risen from their seats, clutching the arm of a neighbor. Unblinking eyes stare down from the balcony.
“Please, help,” I yell. “Anyone!”
Comprehension flashes. Frightful cries erupt. I push at the cabinet again, fruitlessly, as a blur of uniforms and suits scurry for the aisles. I search for a military nurse or medic’s insignia, anticipating Charles’s next need, but the strangers freeze. All of them. Turned to statues.
Are they still deliberating, doubting if this is real? A fierce command gathers in my throat, ready to burst, when a noise sweeps through the room. A pattering, like drizzle growing to a downpour.
Clapping. People are applauding.
No—stop! I think as their grimaces morph into smiles, gasps reversing into sighs.
And then I see it. A metallic glint swings me around. Two sets of handcuffs hang from the crook of a finger. Charles—he made it out, alive and safe! Panting with a look of exhaustion, he stands sopping wet at the opened cabinet. The milk can looms in the background, sealed with all six locks.
Zealous hollers and whistles bloom. Many in the crowd pat their chests, calming their hearts, laughing from the thrill. Charles absorbs it all with grandeur, bidding “Merci.” His grin widens with his every bow.
Still overcome, I command myself to breathe, to repel the memories stacked on my chest.
Nudged by Charles, I stiffly join his side and catch sight of the child in front. Her face bears the light-headed shock of a near plummet from a cliff. Though equally dizzy, I seek to uphold the facade that nothing actually went astray. My sense of relief gains purchase until a pointed wink from Charles. Appreciative, it seems.
But not for me. Not even for some bombshell in the audience as I’ve come to expect.
This wink is for the right wing of the stage. More aptly, for the pair of stagehands who have conveniently reappeared. From their boastful smirks of those in the know, every obstacle of the act floats back through my mind. They join like patches of clouds, snips of a riddle, conjuring a whole: the ax and keys, the newly added latch, Charles’s urgent pounding that halted at my calls…
My attention cuts back to his face.
There’s arrogance in his eyes, underscored by his stance. No authentic trace of fear, nor true relief from a tragedy averted.
Why would there be? All had gone according to plan, his plan, including my role as an unwitting pawn.
